Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

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MEMOIRS OF JOHN ADAMS DIX.

votes, and came near electing their candidate for governor.
They were already preparing to extend their organization
into other States, to hold a National Convention, and to take
steps to secure, if possible, the Presidency.
It was with this singular body, in the earlier stage of its history, that my father had to contend, as a supporter of General
Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. During the years 1828, 1829,
and 1830 he was actively engaged in the Jackson movement,
as chairman of the Republican Committee of Otsego County.
His name is signed to more than one address to the electors
of that county, in which the character of political Antimasonry is critically analyzed. According to him, it was no
longer inspired by an honest and virtuous feeling growing
out of the violence committed on the person of Captain Morgan, and aiming at the punishment of the perpetrators, but
had become a political instrument for the elevation of ambitious men to power. He held that its principles involved an
indiscriminate condemnation of the innocent and the guilty;
that it had proved itself proscriptive, uncharitable, and barbarous; that in certain parts of the State it had separated
parents and children, friends and neighbors, dissolved the
very ties of blood, and in more than one case invaded the
altars of religion, showing itself to be the same spirit which
in other countries had shaken the fabric of society to its
foundations, and filled them with scenes of disorder and calamity.* For these and other reasons, he strenuously opposed a party which, already identified with the fanatics of
an earlier date, and now rapidly taking the shape of a purely
political organization, disputed the field with the old Democratic Republicans, and aimed at securing the control, not of
the State of New York only, but ultimately of the National
Government. In an article published in the Freeman's Journal, May, 1829, he thus discusses the subject:

* Addresses, dated Cooperstown, October 20, 1829, and October 25,
1830, and issued by the Republican Central Corresponding Committee.